POTTS ON CYBERLIBEL

Where are You Going to Turn For Advice on the Law When You Are Retained to Prosecute or Defend a Cyber Libel Action ?

Have you considered the impact of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the SPEECH Act (Title 28 §§ 4101-4105) will have on your cyberlibel action if the defendant resides in the United States?

When can you succeed in a cyberlibel action if the defendant’s statement is linked by a hyper link to a defamatory website? When will you fail?

If you are defending a cyberlibel action, how do you explain to your client if the Judge strikes out your plea of vulgar abuse and makes the following comments as a Judge did in a recent British Columbia case:

“…[37] Paragraph 11 has the virtue of providing some entertainment value, if nothing else. It reads (pleading removed)

[38] This “merely vulgar and childish abuse” plea demonstrates a rather serious lack of understanding of the cause of action of defamation, and should be struck. While it is open to the defendant to plead that in the specified circumstances, right-minded members of the public would not have understood the words complained of to mean what the plaintiffs claim they mean, this is not the way to do it.”

Are there different rules and approaches and defences involving actions against intermediaries as opposed to simply suing the original author? Does it matter if the intermediary is a search engine, a news portal, a discussion forum or a Face book page?

When can you obtain an anonymization order? When would you want such an order? What are the terms and extent of an anonymization order?

These issues and many more are covered in the revised addition of Cyberlibel: Information Warfare now titled POTTS ON CYBERLIBEL. Decisions from courts in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Hong Kong are referred to and discussed. The Hon. Ian Binnie CC, QC, formerly a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, has written the Forward.

POTTS ON CYBERLIBEL will be published by Irwin Law this fall.

The author, David Potts, is a Toronto Barrister specializing in Internet defamation and cyberlibel. He has been retained on hundreds and hundreds of defamation actions for Plaintiffs and Defendants over the past 30 plus years. He has co-authored and authored three text books on defamation used by lawyers and Judges and assisted in the revision of a version of the Jury Charge used by Ontario Judges in Defamation actions.

If you need advice or counsel on Internet defamation or cyberlibel issues please contact David Potts atdpotts@cyberlibel.com.

Cyberlibel: Information Warfare in the 21st Century?

In March 2011, David Potts completed a book entitled, "Cyberlibel: Information Warfare in the 21st Century?" published by Irwin Law, one of Canada’s most innovative legal publishers. If you want to learn more about this book, please click here

TV interview with David Potts

If you wish to see a TV interview on Business News Network, one of Canada’s most popular business stations, with David Potts about cyberlibel, please click here